


My Last Breath

by DrowningInTheRainbow



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, POV First Person, Reminiscing, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 22:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11633694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInTheRainbow/pseuds/DrowningInTheRainbow
Summary: Songfic featuring "My Last Breath" by Evanescence. These two men loved each other so much, they swear their thoughts are with the other even when the world is collapsing around them.





	My Last Breath

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the present day, but they reminisce about the time surrounding the Zürich base explosion. As it is in first-person, I think they sound very out-of-character (I just wanted to try my hand at writing them that way and it fit with the song). Sorry about that.

_Holding my last breath_

_Safe inside myself_

_Are all my thoughts of you_

_Sweet raptured light it ends here tonight_

~My Last Breath, Evanescence

* * *

_Jack_

A year has passed since the Zürich base explosion. My life has been turned on its head since then. I went from standing on top of the world; or more accurately having the weight of it on my shoulders. After the Omnic Crisis, I felt like the world was looking to me for everything. It finally culminated in it being too much for everyone, Overwatch’s presence itself became too much.

While I may be glad for that weight to be gone, I can’t deny that that stability and reassurance won’t be missed, not to mention everything else Overwatch took from me. Back then I had friends, family, even someone to love. But like a leech, the public eye and everything Overwatch had become sucked the life out of every aspect of my life. My friends were dying protecting people who didn’t appreciate them; my family was distancing themselves from Overwatch and therefore from me. But the hardest part of all was watching Gabriel, my love, grow cold and distant.

I don’t blame him, of course. I hated Overwatch just as much as he did, towards the end. I just don’t think he could distinguish me from the crumbling organization we both helped build. But I still loved him, to the very end; so of course I noticed as he distanced himself from his work, had hidden meetings he wouldn’t tell me about. At the time I couldn’t — or perhaps didn’t want to — put the pieces together, but in the wake of the explosion I realized he must have been conspiring with the terrorist organization Talon.

In the aftermath of the explosion I, along with Gabriel and many others, were presumed dead. I may not be in the public eye anymore, but I am definitely alive. As for Gabriel, I don’t know what to believe. The man I knew is likely dead, I know that, but that doesn’t mean something else didn’t walk away from that explosion. I saw many wonderful and terrible things in my time at Overwatch.

I’ve spent the last year making a name for myself as a vigilante, using my access to the now defunct Overwatch records and stores. My goal? To bring down Talon. I can forgive the world for losing faith in Overwatch, I felt that same way over the years as Overwatch lost its purpose after the Omnic Crisis. But I cannot forgive or forget Talon for taking Gabriel away from me. He was my world, and they wooed him to a dark path he once swore to never go down. I loved that man with everything I had and I was trying to make the world safe for him and I.

Until the day my last breath comes I will… I will end Talon, and all my thoughts, safe inside myself, will lead me to Gabriel once again.

* * *

_I’ll miss the winter_

_A world of fragile things_

_Look for me in the white forest_

_Hiding in a hollow tree (come find me)_

_I know you hear me_

_I can taste it in your tears_

~My Last Breath, Evanescence

* * *

_Gabriel_

It feels like it's been an age since I saw him last. Jack was a gruff man, despite his boyish looks. I can still remember the day we met and hearing that sandpaper voice come from that Aryan beauty shook me to my core. That was the first of many nights I spent thinking of all the dirty things that voice could tell me. It wasn’t until a few years later I’d finally work up the nerve to ask him out on a date and be surprised to hear him say he’d been waiting just as long.

Distancing myself from Jack had been the hardest thing for me to do. But I knew he wouldn’t agree to Talon’s methods and I didn’t dare let him in on what we planned to do. I knew he had grown to hate Overwatch as much as I did and I know the distance between us hurt him as much as it hurt me. Talon was young in those days but what they planned to accomplish actually meant something to me, rather than Overwatch’s bland “protect everything” mission. I knew it would go up in flames, I just didn’t think it would take Jack and me with it. Seems fitting looking back, knowing how much of our souls ended up entwined with that monstrosity.

I don’t know what I had hoped for my future with Jack, going into Talon. Maybe I thought that after his turning a blind eye to Blackwatch’s methods, he might do the same with Talon. It was a fool’s dream.

When Talon’s plans for the Swiss base came to me, I readily agreed. I didn’t care about Overwatch anymore and I hoped hitting them where it hurt would be their downfall. I think I wanted Overwatch gone so I could have Jack all to myself. As their inside man for the mission, I should have realized that I was being closely watched by the others. When I hesitated after seeing Jack inside the building, they must have seen it. The bomb went off as I lunged towards him.

I don’t know what happened after that, or how I survived. If you can call whatever I am now living. At some point I rematerialized in the Talon base of operations. My nonliving state was fascinating for their scientists, but it scared the hell out of me. And I had seen much worse things in my Blackwatch days. I had the mask made and went by my old call sign, Reaper. I felt reborn.

But at night, when faced with the demon I know am, I think back to that explosion. I remember Jack’s knowing eyes on me, and I swear I saw remorse there. Like he _knew_ what was going on and that he felt _responsible_. That was everything I didn’t want to happen.

I don’t know if Jack really died in that explosion. I hear the old Overwatch team held a joint funeral for us, and a part of me hopes Jack really is at peace. But a larger part hopes he’s still out there and that he’s thinking of me, even now. Until his last breath.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
